British
writer-director Joel
Hopkins ("Jorge"/"Jump
Tomorrow") helms this awkward romantic comedy that
teams for the second
time Emma Thompson and Dustin Hoffman following
Stranger Than Fiction
(2006).
It's sentimental poop, predictable and heavy-handed,
but it's mildly
entertaining
because it's so gentle and never loses track of its
limits. Though
Hoffman
gives his usual irritating manic loud and shlumpy
scene-stealing
performance,
Thompson is quite good as the better half of this
relationship as she
endows
her stock supporting character with enough moral
fiber and stiff upper
lip cheer and resignation to make it at least
remotely credible that a
doll like her would fall for the talky physically
unattractive ballsy
nerd
character played by Hoffman.

Musical jingle
composer for
commercials Harvey
Shine (Dustin Hoffman) leaves White Plains for
London to attend his
estranged
daughter Susan's (Liane Balaban) wedding to an
American (Daniel
Lapaine)
nice guy stock market analyst. Harvey's boss
(Richard Schiff) tells the
neurotic not to hurry back because the youngsters in
the office will
nail
the new account without him, but Harvey is too
locked into his own
problems
to figure out the boss is telling him that he's not
needed and insists
on being at the business meeting.

Sad-sack Harvey
learns from
Susan that her
suave stepfather (James Brolin) will give her away
and is made to feel
like two cents by his ex-wife (Kathy Baker) at the
reception rehearsals
when she tells him not to embarrass himself by doing
something foolish.
After the ceremony, the hurt Harvey misses the
reception as he rushes
back
to New York but misses his flight due to a traffic
jam. Upon calling
his
boss, he learns there's no hurry back since he's
fired. Drowning his
sorrows
at the airport pub, he runs into aspiring writer
Kate Walker (Emma
Thompson)
who works at Heathrow polling passengers and he was
one of the rude
ones
who refused to answer her questionnaire. Kate has
just gone out on a
bummer
of a blind date arranged by a co-worker with someone
without the good
social
graces to ask his friends to leave them alone at
their pub table after
they join them without an invite. Kate like Harvey
is also an unhappy
soul
who is frustrated romantically. The single woman
lives with her
clinging
needy mom (Eileen Atkins), who fears her new Polish
neighbor is a
serial
killer and constantly calls Kate on the cell phone
to badger her with
trivialities.

The two outsiders,
who life
seemingly has passed
them by, meet on the cute at the pub and Kate ends
up attending with
Harvey
the wedding reception. It's no problem figuring out
from here on what
results.

The film looks
terrific but
sounds as banal
as its schmaltzy plotline, but at least there's a
few laughs and some
good
London sights that don't include Big Ben to make it
almost
bearable.